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The whole country is a\u2019twitter (see what I did there!) about players kneeling in protest of the national anthem. It\u2019s amazing how quickly people forget\u2026do we not remember Tim Tebow?<\/p>\n
Actually, it\u2019s quite understandable that we\u2019ve forgotten Tebow, since the mainstream media, for some reason, won\u2019t remind us. Anyway, wayyyyyy back in history past, around 2011, there was this football player, a quarterback even, Tim Tebow.<\/p>\n
He knelt at football games. And the media shredded him, poured endless hatred upon him.<\/p>\n
Talking Head: \u201cIf Trump were an NFL team, he\u2019d be 0-16\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n –I watch Bill Maher\u2019s Left Wing Hate show every week on HBO, and of course they\u2019re losing their mind over this fracas. It\u2019s amazing the bubble they\u2019re in, nobody on the show pointed out possible inaccuracy here, and the audience cheered at the “correct” analogy. My memory isn\u2019t the best, but it really seems like he won something\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n But now the media is praising football players who kneel\u2026I really don\u2019t like the different response here. Tebow knelt in prayer and homage to God, and was destroyed for it, while our football players are kneeling for\u2026what, exactly? \u00a0Protesting the flag? I think it\u2019s a protest for Black Lives Matter, or against America, or something. My best guess is they\u2019re protesting police mistreatment of certain citizens. Hey, I think our police are grotesquely overreaching their powers, and concede protests should be made. But those football players are paid $50,000 an hour to play football, not protest. They should do it on their own time.<\/p>\n Tebow and the other players\u2019 kneelings are protected as free speech even if some disagree with it, and while I make no assertion of approval for one or the other, it\u2019s very striking that media hates Tebow and loves the other kneelers. Free speech is a great ideal, and I\u2019m all for it but\u2026reality is an issue, too.<\/p>\n Bottom line, your average football fan, you know, the guys who ultimately pay the multimillion dollar contracts of the players, are getting ticked off at making politics a part of what should merely be an ultraviolent game. The fans cheered Tebow, but the media screeched him off the field. The fans are booing the kneelers, but media doesn\u2019t cover that<\/a>.<\/p>\n The media ignores the people, and is puzzled that the people are tuning them out.<\/p>\n Trump is something of a successful businessman, and so he gave the owners a bit of business advice: get rid of employees who insult the customers. The media has twisted his message a bit, but ultimately Trump has a point because infuriating your customer base is bad for business. The media naturally poured hatred on Trump for the unsolicited advice but, I dunno, that seems like a pretty basic idea. Even if Trump was a failed businessman, I\u2019d have to consider this as a decent suggestion.<\/p>\n The owners of the NFL, the guys who are trying to run their sports business to make a profit, are really puzzling over what to do. For the most part, it looks like they\u2019re going to stick to the media-suggested plan and continue to annoy their fans, but I\u2019d like to think they\u2019re still open to input.<\/p>\n Their main options here are either a) more appeasement of players or b) realize they\u2019re a business, and no business can survive by insulting and thereby eliminating the customer base. What to do, what to do?<\/p>\n Even though I honestly don\u2019t care what happens to the NFL, I do care about rational decision making. Ignoring Trump strikes me as a poor idea (ignoring him failed spectacularly during the last presidential election, after all), but I concede that maybe Trump\u2019s words are wrong here.<\/p>\n Words are one thing, but how about empirical evidence? Well, as luck would have it, I rather follow higher education, so I have some data here the owners of the NFL should consider.<\/p>\n Mizzou university was one of the first schools where racial incidents were becoming a regular thing<\/a>, wayyyy back in 2010 . Admin got in on the act in 2011 by forming fiefdoms filled with Vice Presidents of Diversity whose express purpose was to make things worse. Years of work by these highly paid professionals succeeded in keeping racial issues a huge problem on campus.<\/p>\n The football team rose to prominence in one of the more recent waves of protests, around 2015, when they used extortion to get rid of the Poo Bah there, among other concessions. Now, here\u2019s the thing: as soon as the football team started their shenanigans, the administration there should have recalled the core purposes of the institution: education and research.<\/p>\n Based on this understanding, rather than appeasement, the administration should have simply gotten rid of the football team. Football teams are as irrelevant to higher education as political protests are to a football game.<\/p>\n (Digression: those protests should be<\/em> irrelevant to the game, but what if the protesting players allow their quarterback to become injured because he didn\u2019t join the protest<\/a>? The mainstream media blackout on this story is predictable.)<\/p>\n In addition to not following the mission of higher education, there\u2019s also the issue of keeping your customers happy. Mizzou, like the NFL owners, doesn\u2019t seem to get this point. By making their school famous for race riots, the school has basically destroyed its customer base. They\u2019ve closed 7 dorms now because students don\u2019t want to go to a school with race riots<\/a> and a system of appeasement which can only debase education further is likewise unattractive to potential students.<\/p>\n Mizzou killed their customer base\u2026are you paying attention, NFL owners? Now, maybe the owners aren\u2019t really businessmen, and are instead football purists. This would explain their reluctance to get rid of the employees angering their customers: the owners want great football players, and are willing to sacrifice the NFL for it. I again point out that letting the players have their way might lead to them throwing games as they escalate their protests\u2026the \u201csport\u201d will definitely die then.<\/p>\n A ridiculous thought? Perhaps, but Mizzou also has a football team they were unwilling to eliminate, at the expense of their customer base. How\u2019s football at Mizzou working out?<\/p>\n Two Years After Embracing Racial Protests, Mizzou Football Is A Dumpster Fire<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Again, I don\u2019t particularly care for college football, but \u201cdumpster fire\u201d should be a pretty strong indication that whatever Mizzou is doing, the NFL owners should do the opposite.<\/p>\n As for the football team, which saw\u00a0<\/em>millions<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in donations disappear overnight, well, it’s now a full-fledged dumpster fire.<\/em><\/p>\n Part of the customer base in Mizzou is the donors\u2026making them angry is just bad business. You don\u2019t need Trump to tell you that. The Mizzou \u201cleadership\u201d doesn\u2019t know the basics of how to run a business despite all those (bogus) Ph.D.s in Leadership and Leadership Awards it grants itself. Nevertheless, admin is trying to make some lemonade from the lemons it gave itself, and it bears comment:<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the seven dorms the university can no longer fill with students are now being converted into\u00a0<\/em>makeshift hotel rooms<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for the fans still willing to show up to the games. \u201cWe had a total loss of about $5 million, so you\u2019re talking zero (dollars) if we do nothing versus $60,000 (three games in)<\/em>\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n Now, absolutely, Mizzou should try to get some money off all those abandoned (and in some cases, never been used) dorms, but I want to point out how infuriating this is. The administrators responsible for building those useless dorms? They received all sorts of money for their \u201cleadership\u201d and \u201cvision\u201d even as they\u2019ve stuck the taxpayers with millions in unpayable bills leading the university down a path any chucklehead could have seen would fail. Yes, getting $60,000 from hotel fees helps a little, but realize the fiefdom of administrators who came up with that brilliant idea will receive several hundred thousand in pay raises and bonuses for their cleverness.<\/p>\n We really, really, need to re-think how we run our institutions.<\/p>\n In addition to losing students and losing donations, the football team is losing games. Appeasement really is a lose\/lose\/lose decision. We now have empirical evidence for the wrong thing to do in the face of these inappropriate protests.<\/p>\n Will the NFL owners heed empirical evidence? Seeing as one NFL player was actually forced to apologize for respecting the national anthem, even though his actions made the customers happy<\/a>\u2026I suspect not.<\/p>\n Now, I won\u2019t be broken up if the NFL owners\u2019 irrational behavior leads to great harm, possibly even the annihilation, of the NFL. But it is curious that there is no widespread pointing and laughing by the media at their strange decisions\u2026even as the media has no trouble laughing at the idea that \u201cdon\u2019t enrage your customers\u201d is good business advice.<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/mizzuenrol.jpeg\")
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